Mental Health Miniseries: Jennifer Heisz, PhD

TRAINED

Nike

Sleep, Mental Health, Training, Diet, Nike Podcast, Movement, Workout, Nutrition, Exercise, Recovery, By Nike, Running, Health & Fitness, Trained, Health, Fitness, Eating, Nike

4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Jennifer Heisz, PhD, decided to complete an Ironman, she wasn’t looking to earn bragging rights. After years of researching how exercise can fight anxiety and depression, she wanted to feel the effects for herself. Then the pandemic closed her lab, shut down gyms and cancelled races. In the face of piled-on stress and uncertainty, she not only organized her own Ironman, she finished it solo. Along the way, she uncovered the pandemic paradox: Mental health is both a motivator and a barrier to exercise. On this episode, Dr Heisz kicks off our mental health miniseries by telling us what to do when anxiety stifles our urge to get moving. She also gives us a crash course on what goes on in the brain and body when we experience anxiety, stress or depression, and the ways that movement can ward off their symptoms. By detailing her scientific findings and her athletic journey, she shows us why it doesn’t take training for an Ironman to boost your brain, it just takes a little bit of movement every day.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh hello, welcome to Trained, Body and Mind, a podcast exploring the cutting edge of
0:05.5	holistic fitness.
0:06.5	I'm your host Jacqueline Byer.
0:09.0	Each episode I connect with the world's leading experts and athletes to talk about mindset,
0:13.2	movement, nutrition, recovery, and sleep.
0:15.9	What we like to call the Five Fasits of Fitness.
0:18.9	For the next few episodes, we're doing something different, a three-part series on mental
0:23.1	health.
0:24.1	Today's is focused on how movement impacts mood, and our expert has some pretty convincing
0:28.3	info to share.
0:31.6	My favorite studies are the ones that put head-to-head the antidepressants with exercise.
0:38.4	This blows my mind that exercises equally beneficial to these antidepressant drugs.
0:46.8	Equally beneficial across tons of studies, and in some cases, exercise is even better
0:54.0	and certain people benefit more from exercise than they do from the antidepressant drugs.
1:02.4	That's Jennifer Heiss, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster
1:07.6	University in Canada, and the Director of the NeuroFit Lab.
1:11.8	Dr. Heiss has a book due out soon called Move the Body, Heal the Mind, that details her
1:16.6	research on movement and mental health, and it couldn't come at a better time.
1:21.4	Mental health problems have spiked since the pandemic broke out.
1:24.8	Forty-one percent of Americans report symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, and that goes
1:29.6	hand in hand with the fact that people have also been moving less.
1:33.6	Dr. Heiss had been training for an Iron Man that got canceled by COVID, but putting her
	...

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